Reading a book of this magnitude demands its pound of flesh. In one of my status updates, I described it as an Emotional Vampire – it squeezed every single emotion out of me, wringing me dry.

It was like reading The Mistress of Rome all over again… I was on the edge of my seat most of the time as it all came together. And I cried. Twice. Several times I was too scared to read on… but I kept going for one of the best reads of the decade. Yes, it was THAT good.

The basic premise.

Leningrad in 1941 just as the Soviet Union goes to war with Germany. Tatiana is an innocent and sheltered girl who meets a handsome soldier (Alexander) while out shopping for her parents. She’s sitting in the sunshine eating an ice cream, completely oblivious to the world rushing around her and Alexander sees her… can’t take his eyes off her. He follows her onto the bus and she’s so flustered she forgets to get off.

Tatiana finally looked to her right, and there he was, smiling cheerfully at her. He had perfect white teeth – unusual for a Russian. She couldn’t help but smile back. Relief must have shown in her face. Relief and apprehension and anxiety; all that, and something else too.

Grinning, the soldier said, “All right, I give up. Where are you going?”

They have an instant connection. After spending a few hours together he helps her with the shopping (taking her to the Officers store for her goods).

Tatiana watched Alexander walk beyond the iron gate across a courtyard, salute a tall officer, then stop and chat briefly to a cluster of smoking soldiers, breaking into a laugh and striding off. Nothing distinguished Alexander from the others, except that he was taller than anyone else and had darker hair and whiter teeth, broader shoulders and a wider stride. Nothing but that he was vivid and they were muted.

Hw walks her home, Tatiana all excited and happy – and then she discovers that Alexander is the boy her sister recently met and fell in love with.

“You know Dasha…?” but then broke off in the middle of the question, seeing realization and conscience and unhappiness strike his mute, comprehending face.

Tatiana looked at Dasha, then back to Alexander. She felt herself paling from the inside out. Oh no, she wanted to say. Oh no, how can this be?

Her sister, Dasha, means the world to her and claims to be so in love with Alexander. However, he doesn’t feel the same and after seeing Tatiana again (meeting her at work and walking her home, several times), he wants to break off with Dasha, but Tatiana won’t let him. She feels responsible for her sister’s happiness.

What she wanted to say to Dasha was, you’ve had plenty. You can get yourself a new one any time you want. You’re charming and bright and beautiful, and everybody likes you. But I want him for myself.

What she wanted to say was, but what if he likes me best?

The basic triangle is in place, but then it gets more complicated. Alexander has a HUGE secret that he tells Tatiana – he was born an American – and if the Russian secret police find out, he’ll be executed as a spy.

“Tatiana,” he whispered, leaning close to her ear, “we are followed, always, everywhere. The day might come when someone will jump out at you from a secret door, and then you will be presented to someone behind a desk, and he will want to know what Alexander Belov spoke to you about on your walks home.”

The only other person that knows is his one-time friend Dimitri, who is slowly and steadily blackmailing him. Dmitri decides he wants Tatiana and it becomes impossible.

“Tell me about Dimitri, Shura,” she said quietly. “What do you owe him?”

Add in the war and the siege of Leningrad (freezing weather, food shortages, family dying) and you have a complex and highly emotional story that begs to be read. It reduced me to helpless tears several times.

“It’s all right,” Alexander said, taking off his coat. “There’s some stew.”

Coughs. Averted eyes.

Alexander didn’t understand. He turned to Dasha. “I brought you soybeans. Dasha? You said you were making stew.”

“We did, Alexander,” said Dasha sheepishly. “But there was so little. We ate it.”

“You ate it and you didn’t leave her any?”

For a long time Tatiana and Alexander have to sustain their growing secret love with no more than a few words and touches, longing looks and covert walks.

He was crouching as he rummaged through his rucksack. She watched Alexander in profile, his bare muscled arms, his soldier’s body, his spiky wet black hair, a cigarette in the corner of his lips – Tatiana’s breath was taken away from her, he looked so beautiful.

You ache for them to be together and for everything to be out in the open. If you like unrequited love, you will ADORE this.

It was a warm night; her bare arms twice touched the rough material of his army shirt.

“This is the best time, Tatiana,” Alexander said. “Do you want to know why?”

“Please don’t tell me.”

“There will never be a time like this again. Never this simple, uncomplicated.”

Their romance is one of the best I’ve ever read, if not THE best. Lies and betrayal, fear of the secret police, fear of Alexander dying in the war and the constant risks they take to spend time together wrap this into an unforgettable read.

The only thing Tatiana could do was stand several hundred metres away from the archway that led to Pavlov Barracks and watch smoking, laughing soldiers filtering out.

She stood for half an hour. Then she went back to the hospital, thinking, not bombs nor my broken heart can take away from me walking barefoot with you in jasmine June through the Field of Mars.

Be warned. It does NOT have a happy ending.

Alexander and Tatiana sat a long time with their wet, cold faces pressed against each other, his arms around her, her hands cradling his head, while the wind blew the last, dead leaves off the trees, while the sky was a leaky November gray.

I would have been distraught had I not looked ahead to the blurb for the next one (it’s a trilogy). I finished reading this at 1 in the morning and seriously considered getting up and downloading the next in the series… sanity prevailed. I waited until I woke up at 5:30 and downloaded it then J

It’s a rare book that I exceed my 5-star top-rating for, but this is one of them. 6 stars.

The second picks up where the first finished, but with wrenching flashbacks to Alexander’s youth and how he ended up in Russia. The emotional rollercoaster continues…. J

Addison is waking up from an operation when she realises she can hear a voice in her head.

She was alone. Completely alone.

“Hello?” she whispered.

Jesus. It’s about damn time you acknowledge me. I mean, what the fuck? Are you deaf or what?

“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.” She held her head, certain she was hearing the voice in her own mind now.

No freaking way!

Ah, yeah… I don’t think God had anything to do with this, but what do I know. She could practically hear the mental shrug. Maybe he did.

And then she remembers the weird dream she had, the one where she was floating somewhere in the darkness and another person was there… a guy…

His voice still carried the smugness of ‘I told you so’ since she’d received confirmation of her death and resuscitation. And then he’d rubbed her face in it as she came around to one indisputable realization: she had some guy’s soul stuck inside her.

Of course, as a lapsed Catholic, she decides to ask a priest for help.

Oh this ought to be good.

She imagined him kicked back in her head with a bag of popcorn, waiting for the show to begin. As the panel between her and the priest slid open, she panicked. What was the protocol? Was she even allowed to be in there?

She does the only thing she can. Tries to cope with having a strange guy take up residence in her head. She nicknames him the Afterlife Leech and tries, with some success, to block his thoughts and emotions. That is, until he nags her into Googling him.

“Who the hell are you, Rhys?”

Got a lot of hits, did you? The pride in his voice was clear. I’m a bit famous.

Rhys Alexander played rhythm guitar for the massive rock band Black Codex, alongside his brother, Xavier. And now that he’s trapped somewhere in the afterlife, he wants to contact his brother, to say his goodbyes. Addison is convinced it’s a bad idea, that Xavier will write her off as another demented fan but she gives in to his nagging and sends an email. When Xavier phones, she has no idea how to respond.

Rhys started to yell, to really holler in her mind. His string of obscenities was so loud she only managed to catch a word her and there, and through it all, she felt his desperation and fear.

“He recognized your voice,” she blurted out, wanting to stop the onslaught in her head.

Her ears pulsed in the sudden silence, but then she heard Xavier’s response, his voice dark and controlled.

“Who, exactly, recognized my voice?”

Xavier insists on meeting her, to determine if she’s a fake, or just another “crazy-assed-bitch.” And that’s when it gets even stranger.

It felt like someone had fisted her shirt and was pulling her near. And that pull was coming from Xavier’s general direction.

Wait. Something was wrong. She felt… empty.

Rhys?

Panic flooded her as her eyes flew open and locked on Xavier. He stared at her with a horrified expression on his face, his mouth moving soundlessly. Then his gaze darted from side-to-side as his hands gripped his head.

Her breath caught as the realization slammed into her. “Rhys,” she whispered, reaching out to Xavier as if he held an element of her soul she couldn’t breathe without.

Of course, sometime during the weeks they spent ‘together’, she started to fall for him.

“Rhys?”

Mmmm. He sounded lazy, relaxed. And for whatever reason, she pictured his big, strong body all kicked back into a mass of fluffy pillows… with his shirt off, a hint of stubble across his jaw, dark hair tousled, and a deep sensuality shadowing his eyes as he flipped the top button of his jeans open…

But how can a normal girl have any kind of relationship with a dead guy? You’ll have to take my word how fabulous this book is, and read it for yourself < smug smile >

I was captivated from the first page and I couldn’t put it down. I just wish it had been longer. Thankfully, Jolyn Palliata intends more in the Twists of Fate series – the sooner the better for me 🙂

Well, from the reviews I’ve read, this book falls squarely into the Love It or Hate It box, and nowhere in between. For my part? I loved it. From the tantalising opening, through all 3 parts of the story, I was glued to the pages. The first part is the happiest: John meeting Savannah and falling in love. Sweet, heart-warming and feel good, and then it all starts falling apart in Part 2. The final part had me filling up and in tears at the ending. I understand why Nicholas Sparks wrote the end as he did, but man, it was a tear jerker.

John Tyree is on leave from his army posting in Germany, and right at the start of his 2 weeks break he meets Savannah. She’s an innocent and utterly guileless, and John is immediately smitten.

“I don’t usually date strangers,” she finally said, “and we only met yesterday. You think I can trust you?”

“I wouldn’t,” I said.

She laughed. “Well in that case, I suppose I can make an exception.”

The story is more than just John and Savannah though, it also charts the frustrating and uneven relationship John has with his father.

Savannah sounded a lot like the little voice that had taken up residence in my head but never bothered paying rent, and right now it whispered that if I felt guilty, maybe I was doing something wrong. I resolved that I would spend more time with him.

Savannah suggests that John’s father may suffer from Aspergers Syndrome, a condition that suddenly makes a lot of sense to John – it explains the uncomfortable distance he’s always had from his only parent.

I looked at Savannah, then up to the ceiling, then to my feet, and finally back to Savannah again. She squeezed my hand, and I drew a shaky breath, marvelling at the fact that while on an ordinary leave in an ordinary place, I’d somehow fallen in love with an extraordinary girl named Savannah Lynn Curtis.

They are both distraught at the end of his leave, but at this stage, both believe they can sustain a loving relationship while he is posted abroad. They talk about being married and Savannah writes him the first of a series of letters that endeavour to keep their love alive.

Wherever you are and no matter what’s going on in your life, when it’s the first night of the full moon – like it was the first time we met – I want you to find it in the night time sky. I want you to think about me and the week we shared, because wherever I am and no matter what’s going on in my life, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing.

They count down the time until his service is due to end. And then with bitter irony, three months to go… September 11th 2001. John signs on for another two years and ends up posted to Iraq.

In the mail, there were six letters from my father. But from Savannah, there was only one, and in the dim light, I began to read.

Dear John. I’m writing this letter at the kitchen table, and I’m struggling because I don’t know how to say what I’m about to tell you.

At this point, I had to close the book for a while. I wanted to yell at Savannah, slap her soundly on both cheeks and shout Noooooo! So their relationship was faltering, she might have thought it couldn’t last, but to write him the classic Dear John while he’s on active service and fighting for his life every day? How cruel could this woman be?

By this point, I was too invested in the story to leave it, so I followed it through John’s denial and heartbreak. Through the continuing illness of his father – and to the point where he next saw Savannah. I’d been looking for a light and fluffy read when I came to this novel – epic fail. But I know this will stay with me for some time and John Tyree has claimed a place in my heart.